Finally, in Part 14 of this mess I finished with my excessive analysis of America and how it perceives sports, finishing with the facts that we dominate the Olympics, measured by the only metric that matters: medal count. Now, I want to look at the big three sports in the US: football, baseball and basketball.   All three are essentially purely American inventions/creations and in each we have systems of development worth discussing in the context of all of what’s gone before.

As well, for reasons I discussed yesterday, each has a tendency (due to massive incentives) to draw a large population of American athletes into them.  There’s a third reason they need to be discussed that applies to the Olympic lifting issue specifically but I’ll get to that shortly.

Of those three, football is an almost exclusively American sport although a handful of other countries do have leagues.  There is no international competition (i.e. American teams do not play against other countries) and it is not competed Olympically.  It’s still relevant.

Baseball is being played to a greater degree internationally although, outside of a brief stint in the Olympic games, it is not played between countries so far as I can tell; I’ll discuss baseball tomorrow.  Finally is basketball which is and has been competed internationally and Olympically since the early part of the 20th century and make a huge point about America.  I’ll talk about that on Friday.

For each sport I’ll first give a quick overview of the rules (for any non-American readers) since that also provides insight into the physiological characteristics, tying it in with the genetics/physiology issue (which ties into the American melting pot idea).  I’ll also try to briefly examine some of the other factors that I’ve examined for the other sports I’ve talked about in this series.

And with that out of the way…are you ready for some football?

Continue reading Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 15